Blog: Perspectives

Earth Day, since its inception in 1970, has been a time to celebrate the environment and advocate for its protection. Occasionally, we need protection from Earth’s ecological systems when natural hazards turn into...

At the beginning of April 2017, Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper, broke the news that more than 100 men perceived to be gay or bisexual were rounded up, sent to secret detention centers, and tortured in Chechnya.

On 17 May 2018 for International Day of Against Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (#IDAHOTB), the LGBTI Core Group and OutRight worked with the Free and Equal Campaign and allies to host the United Nations event "Alliances for Equality." The panel, broadcast on UN Web TV, discussed building partnerships of trust, accountability, and support with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex people and communities.

Subha Wijesiriwardena from Women and Media Collective joined OutRight staff, Rashima Kwatra, M.J. Moneymaker, and Grace Poore for an interview about our recent partnership project that focused on tackling barriers to family violence and domestic violence protections for LGBTI communities. Special thanks to Mikelle Benfield, an intern at OutRight, for transcribing the interview.

Issues impacting the lesbian community all around the world are often silenced, unaddressed, and sidelined. In this patriarchal, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic world, lesbians face double discrimination: first for identifying as women and second for their sexual orientation. Lesbians who express themselves as butch, are gender non-conforming, or present themselves outside of society’s accepted gender constructs, can often face even harsher victimization.

Earth Day, since its inception in 1970, has been a time to celebrate the environment and advocate for its protection. Occasionally, we need protection from Earth’s ecological systems when natural hazards turn into disasters among our communities. Vulnerability, in a disaster context, can be defined as characteristics that influence a person’s ability to respond, cope, recover, and adapt to the impact of a natural hazard. The physical characteristics of a natural hazard are important in creating a disaster, but vulnerability is also a vital component as to why disasters happen. This vulnerability comes from their society and can result in some people finding themselves more vulnerable than others when dealing with a disaster situation.

At the beginning of April 2017, Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper, broke the news that more than 100 men perceived to be gay or bisexual were rounded up, sent to secret detention centers, and tortured in Chechnya. Reports since then have estimated that more than 20 men were murdered or died while in detention and the number of those detained could be as high as 200.

OutRight joins 60+ LGBTIQ reproductive rights and human rights organizations to oppose the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as the new Secretary of State. During his 6 yrs in Congress, Pompeo established a record in opposition to womens rights, women’s health and human rights. His legislative record illustrates his hostility towards SRHR and would do nothing to end the rapid devolution of women’s rights at State Department. Read coalition statement below:

From March 12th to 23rd world leaders, ministerial delegations and civil society representatives attended the 62nd session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at the United Nations (UN) in New York. CSW is the UN’s largest multilateral meeting on women’s rights and gender justice with over 8,000 non-government organizations and hundreds of government representatives traveling to New York to participate each year.

The Indonesian parliament is expected to vote in favor of proposed Criminal Code amendments that will criminalize consensual same-sex behavior and sex outside of marriage (extramarital and premarital). This vote will disproportionately impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people along with thousands of heterosexual adults in intimate non-marital relationships.

A Brief History: The CSW was founded in 1946 and is a “functional commission” of the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). It advises them on issues related to gender and sexuality alongside UN Women (more details here). In 1996, the Commission became the lead monitoring role in assessing progress and gaps in the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (read more on this here).

Advocating for the rights of women everywhere is inclusive within OutRight’s overall mission to further human rights and opportunities for LGBTIQ people. The month of March, however, allows the aims of OutRight and many others to pay special focus on the empowerment of all women. This comes with the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8th and the 62nd session on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) March 12-23.

The path towards achieving gender equality and the protection of human rights for all people, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, is long and difficult. While we have made enormous gains in the past decade, a rise of opposition globally stands to stem progress.